Thursday, 31 March 2011

About 2 months ago I had the pleasure of an extended stay at Plymouth's Derriford hospital for a Coronary bypass operation under the skilled hands of their surgical team I a pleased to report that the care at Derriford is the "mutt's nuts" and with the exception of the food which frankly looks and tastes like it has crawled out of a local stagnant pond, I was happy as a MP on a visit to the fees office. One of the delightful innovations for patients in the modern NHS is a big hovering monitor thing that hangs on a stalk in front of you which gives you access to TV, internet, music and hospital radio for about £5 a day. Through the early part of my stay the gentle soothing of morphine and the fact I couldn't move meant I largely ignored this device, but I did notice that for some reason every 5 minutes a picture of the secretary of state for health Andrew "slasher" Lansley flashed up on the screen. Andrew (who according the register of members interests has been paid by such healthy food companies as Walkers Crisps and Mars in the past as an adviser and whose wife has "close links to drugs companies") is of course famous as the man who wishes to destroy the NHS by flogging it off to big companies while making cuts of £1 billion pounds a year. What pray tell could Mr Lansley want from me a humble patient undergoing major heart surgery. On day 7, bored out of my mind, I took the bold step of putting the head phones on and finding out. It seemed that Mr Lansley was urging me to fill in a NHS customer satisfaction survey through the monitor system which asked such questions as,

1) Your name and address.

2) How has your care been in the hospital?

3) Are the nurses nice?

4) Does the food taste like semi evolved plankton?

All very bland I am sure you will agree, the last question left me gasping.

5) Who do you trust more the to run the NHS, Tory, Lib Dem or Labour?

Now what in the name of all that is good and holy does Andrew need this information for? Is he somehow hoping to weed out pinko lefties from the survey to make his results look better? Is this all going onto some big database at Tory HQ to make life easier on election day?

All I know is that asking this question as part of a government funded survey from the sick is immoral, indecent and just plain shoddy. For the record I would like to say formally, through the media of this blog, that Mr Lansley can go stick his survey up his poop shoot, along with his horrible NHS reforms, his budget slashing and anything else he is planning. Someone who seems to agree with me is Youtube user alrap999 who has created this rap [sic] telling Mr Lansley what he thinks of him. (Warning contains adult language that some viewers may find offensive, not me mind I am an adult.)